[Closed] Roadside rubbish - is it getting worse everywhere?

Yep - getting worse here too. Throw away society. Literally!

Agreed. Here in S.Wales the mountain common land is even worse.

My g/f has just spent a week over here from Konstanz Germany, she kept saying I love the island, England is so nice, but I can't believe how much litter there is everywhere....

I agree - and at the moment I live in a very rural area 🙄

Being a passengers his week, as I'm usually the designated driver, I made this comment.. The dual carrigeways are ridiculously covered in crap. What wrong with ppl, that the have to throw rubbish out the window as the drive? Ffs leave it in the footwell & transfer it to the bin when you get to your destination....

our local council have privatised the prosecution of litter dropers ,a fine of 80 quid and a court summons usually has a good effect, thousands have been fined i the last few months, and littering has gone down a lot.

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/51-people-due-court-litter-10570756

A3 is shocking - its like an open top rubbish lorry has driven through in high wind. Terrible

Here's a fairly interesting little vid from Highways England [url=

It's very noticeable when you come back from abroad. People in this country expect everything to be cleared up for them, it's very sad.

Sad thing I realised a while ago is that you don't really need signs to let you know how far to the next services or maccies, you can tell by the volume of rubbish scattered down the road leading from them.

One reason why I dislike trail centres is the disgusting quantity of plastic drink bottles bought from the cafe that I've found scattered along the fist mile or two of the trail.

It makes me wonder why we haven't got armies of community service types (the 10s of thousands not sent to prison) sorting it out. Or perhaps incentivise some of those seeking work to get an extra £50 a week to be part of a 40hr a week clean up gang. It's truly embarrassing how littered and down at heel much of this country is

A surfer called Martin Dorey has been running a campaign called #2minutebeachclean for a couple of years to document and tackle beach and marine litter. The idea is that when you go to the beach you spend a couple of minutes picking up and disposing of a few it of rubbish. Maybe its time for a #2minutetrailclean

Yes, definitely worse now than I can remember since I was a kid in the 1960's-70's. Some of it may be down to councils no longer having the money to spend on litter picking, but I think a lot of it is down to the seemingly general lazy oafish behaviour of the average British inhabitant. National pride in the UK seems to extend to supporting the National football team, or putting a National flag sticker on your vehicle (and then throwing rubbish out of it!).

I've driven around Western Europe quite a bit, especially in the last 10 years, and the abundance of litter everywhere in the UK is really noticeable once I leave the ferry or chunnel. Interested to read andyt1054 g/f's comment, as I've heard the same from Finnish, Greek and Dutch friends - all of them love the country and the people, but commented about the litter ....oh, and the amount of fat people :))

Glasgow might be getting ever-so-slightly better, but only becuase it was so bad to start with 🙁

and this

People in this country expect everything to be cleared up for them, it's very sad.

It always amazes me how far away from a McDonald's you find their cartons. There should definitely be a **** wit tax levied on them.

I've recently taken up a long commute along the A27 and A34, the litter is phenomenal, I can't quite believe how bad it's got.

You can tell when the A34 leaves Hampshire and enters Oxfordshire, Oxfordshire is a non stop procession of thick litter. There must be tonnes of it.

Who drops it? I don't know anyone who'd dream of dropping litter.

I've always wondered why McDonalds don't print your car registration number on the food packaging at drive throughs - it would stop littering overnight if a few people were fined after being traced by it.

[url= http://www.northdevonjournal.co.uk/Litter-pick-begins-A361-North-Devon-link-road/story-28892263-detail/story.html ]Would cut down the need for this[/url]

[url= http://www.northdevonjournal.co.uk/Concerns-rapid-growth-marine-litter-volunteers/story-28976205-detail/story.html ]Plenty happening here[/url]

[url= http://www.northdevonjournal.co.uk/tonnes-rubbish-removed-Ilfracombe-harbour/story-28969880-detail/story.html ]Here[/url]

our local council have privatised the prosecution of litter dropers ,a fine of 80 quid and a court summons usually has a good effect, thousands have been fined i the last few months, and littering has gone down a lot.

That's a great idea, If my local councillor did that and also chased the dirty bastards that let their dogs shite at will, I'd bloody canvas for them!.

Good plan Trailseeker! I well remember my beach cleaning student job - wandering around with a picker and a bin bag.

One little darling threw his empty burger box on the ground and his mum awkwardly told him to pick it up (I was standing about six feet away). Kid's response was,"It's his job to do that". Dad laughed and they all walked off.

If my litter picker had had a spike on it, I'd still be doing time.

It bothers me hugely that so, so many people think it's perfectly normal to just lob their rubbish wherever they like - adults are just as bad as kids IME.

In contrast, when I provided my local authority (Craven) with good evidence of the source of load of flytipped rubbish just inside the national park, they didn't even bother contacting me.

Which could partly explain why there is a fresh load of house clearance crap up that particular lane appearing on a regular basis.

More than once when I have challenged people the response is "I'm keeping someone in a job!".
Kids still do it because it's "macho"

I returned a half eaten fish supper once back through a car window. They were raging. 🙂

As a society we need to make people feel these things aren't acceptable - hopefully without getting punched. It does seem the norm for smokers is to drop fag ends after use, and gum gets spat out. To many litter isn't their responsibility so they don't feel bad about dropping it and must be challenged!

teamhurtmore - Member
A3 is shocking - its like an open top rubbish lorry has driven through in high wind. Terrible

I agree, I use the A3 every week.. It's bloody shocking when you get upto Frensham/Bordon then just south of Guildford, then the long run to the M25 is just awful.

In all the time I've been driving I've honestly never seen anyone throw rubbish out of the windows of cars/trucks.. fags yes, but nothing else.

I'm confused as to where it all comes from.

It saddened me last year when touring Shetland, Orkney and the Highlands. Litter in the ditches everywhere. Who, exactly, thinks that's OK? Applies everywhere but particularly in the most beautiful parts of this country.

Some good ideas above. If everyone spent 2 minutes of their surf / ride / walk / climb time filling a bag it would make a huge difference.

It's definitely not just roads. I do the odd organised litter pick as a [url= http://www.sustrans.org.uk/volunteer/get-involved/vacancies ]Volunteer Sustrans Ranger[/url] to help keep the paths clear.

We can spend a morning on a short half mile stretch and easily fill a dozen large bin bags of cans, packets, bottles,and general rubbish. It's really disheartening.

When people stop to talk to us they are often amazed we have volunteered and say things like "The council should be doing this" when the reality is that it shouldn't need doing in the first place!

It's accumulating innit, so it's going to look worse and worse even at the same rate.

It's awful though. From observing litter droppers, I think a lot of people genuinely have no idea they are doing anything wrong. They just think that's what you do with your rubbish.

In fact, look at the comment on that Highways Agency video accusing them of [i]"a clear breach of their Environmental Protection Act S89 duty"[/i] because they [i]"allowed litter to accumulate until at least 1st February – almost 2 months"[/i] 😯

They [i]shouldn't need[/i] to clear litter that often and there is no way they have the budget to do so.

Councils may well be prosecuting but what they need is publicity. Governments have succeeded in making drink-driving antisocial but I bet all the campaigns have cost a fortune. Printing postcodes or car regs on packaging may help as might a deposit on plastic bottles.

council here have gone from monthly to twice a year litter picking because of cuts. Its inevitable litter has got worse.

Some lovely person dumped a load of rubbish out their car window on the road outside my house, my neighbour was coming out so they had to stop. Apparently he reversed out, got out his car, picked the rubbish up, opened their door and chucked it all back in. They were a bit upset, arrisoles.

Haha! The U.K. Is absolutely sparkling compared to over here in Brazil where they clog up streams and rivers with rubbish which then become breeding grounds for all sorts of diseases. Having said that one city Belo Horizonte I believe have stopped giving away plastic bags with shopping, you can't even buy them for 5p like in tesco, people quickly learn to take their own bags.

I like the idea of fining people or perhaps in the future it will degrade much quicker through advances in technology.

Throw away society and council cuts means fewer people to deal with it.

Still, the implosion of the NHS and social care should reduce the population enough to reduce the rubbish problem....

It's very noticeable when you come back from abroad. People in this country expect everything to be cleared up for them, it's very sad.

This, I noticed most when I came back from a year abroad. Really bums you out.

If you want to see something worse google "Maldives Rubbish Island"

A guy in his 50s in the car in front of me this morning threw his empty fag packet and a wrapper out of the window, I pull along side him and screamed at him for being a "scruffy c**t and ask why he did it... He could give a reason and just said sorry...
Strange answer but my early am grumpy face screaming in his car window will hopefully stop him from doing it again.

Roadside?
Anyone used the train from the Northern [s]Outhouse [/s]Powerhouse of Manchester up to Leyland (which I guess is a Northern Fusebox)?

As you pull out of the station there is land-fill site worth of garbage on the trackside. A biblical amount.

I thought the run in to Birmingham was grim but, wow. 😯

Yeah- Litter, dog muck, and dog muck bags everywhere 🙁
Amongst the usual empty cans and rubbish from take aways, I saw 2 Benecol bottles at the side of the road near Macclesfield Forest on Sunday. Seems a strange thing to take out with you and chuck out of the car. And don't get me started on the volume of dog muck on the walking trails at Macclesfield Forest- I went for a walk there recently and there was a dollop of dogshit literally every step of the way for the first few hundred metres from the car park despite the provision of plenty of dog muck bins, and warning signs of CCTV. These are people who have made a choice to drive up to a beautiful part of the country for a walk and think it's fine to ruin the place for themselves and everyone else!

Yep, it's disgusting, the country is a dump thanks to lazy inconsiderate c words. I hate them.

I'm a postie and the estates I deliver to are horrendous, people are rats. You can't expect them to keep other places clear of rubbish when their own front gardens are used as rubbish bins and ash trays. Same people who never ever put out any recycling.

Lazy ****less scummy rats

As mentioned above rail sides never get cleared and it just mounds up. I'd love to be a litter picker, out doors all day, making an improvement.
I watched 3 council litter pickers last week on one of the roads I was delivering on, they missed 2/3rds of the litter! Useless

We all complain about it on here but quite a few moan about the latest national scheme to tidy up!

It always amazes me how far away from a McDonald's you find their cartons. There should definitely be a **** wit tax levied on them.

+1 for sure. I saw some Mc ShiteyDonalds packaging on the road between Reeth & Gunnerside. Effing scruffy tramps. 👿

I returned a half eaten fish supper once back through a car window. They were raging.

Yes getting worse here - scum!! I hate litter. Quite often there's an area about 8 mins drive from a Macky D's where there are loads of M D boxes etc

Ive just finished working for a local council on the street cleansing side, alot of the roadside rubbish is dependent on the areas your in , some people look after their areas far better than other do !
We can litter pick certain streets every other day and get 10 bags of litter, while other areas you will be lucky to get a bag !
Our council is about to make massive cuts on the cleansing side which will reduce sweepers and litter picking in all areas ! ... not good at all , expect it too get worse 🙁

The council cuts are irrelevant, thats sticking a plaster on the problem and is costing those who don't do it money.

Whats needed is some serious education and severe beatings on idiots who do it, as has been said its so ridiculously easy to take rubbish home or take it to one of the thousands of recycling centres.

This was dumped alongside a byway running along the edge of West Woods near Marlborough, the nearest road is well over half a mile away...

[IMG] [/IMG]

The white square is a piece of plastic, there were hair care products mixed in, it's just unbelievable that people feel they can drive along a narrow track then dump their crap.
[img] [/img]

Seen it every day people either going well out of their way to fly tip crap, or just dump their old sofa and fridge outside their own homes and expect others to tidy it for them !
Working for the council certainly opens yours eyes and you realize that some people are utter scum and dont give a shit !

Its particularly bad down here, the A26 and A27 near Lewes is horrendous...yesterday I noticed two poor sods from the council starting the clean up.

Its a combination of oiks lobbing stuff out of their cars, truckers going to/from the Ferries at Newhaven, (the laybys are heaped with bags of rubbish...obviously not all truckers do it) and most notably, all the skip/waste management companies that are based here, they like to drive along with rubbish blowing out of the skip lorries. Interestingly, the constant stream of lorries supplying the incinerator are all closed and you never see rubbish blowing out of them.

The hedges are strung with plastic wrapping materials and the verges covered in bottles and carrier bags, bits of car bumper, shredded tyres, the lot.

This is something I've noticed has been getting worse over the past few years, the problem will only get worse unless there is a significant deterant?
I remember when driving in the USA seeing signs that give the [b] minimum [/b] fine as $1000 for littering.
Although the chances of being caught are slim, a fine of that size might stop some people?
Perhaps dash cam footage could be used to reduce it?

I have just received this from Durham County Council after I complained about the pitiful state of the rural verges:

I understand that Catherine Howes, PA to the Corporate Director has contacted you for further details of locations you believe a particular problem and in your response to her you feel your complaint is on the overall state, and indeed there are many sites. I am sorry that you feel this is the case, however without the specifics, I can of course only give a general response.

I can confirm that roadside verges in residential areas are litter picked every 4 to 6 weeks. Rural roadside verges are litter picked at least twice a year prior to cutting. If it is a noted problem area for litter then we undertake more, and on a reactive basis if identified from our own monitoring. Some of the verges can be very narrow, or on hazardous stretches of the road, meaning we have to bring in traffic management. With these extra costs, for these specific areas, we do have to wait until there is sufficient accumulation, to justify the expenditure. Overall we do aim however to keep litter levels as low as possible – independent surveys of cleanliness to reveal we are well above national standards, although of course we do still get accumulations, which we try to tackle as promptly as possible.

We do welcome reports of any areas that require litter picking. If you feel there are specific areas, I would encourage you to ring the Councils dedicated streetscene number on 03000 261000 or provide further information on the Councils website http://www.durham.gov.uk/reportit.

Thanks for your reply, which sheds a fair bit of light on the matter.
If you are picking litter “at least twice a year prior to cutting” this means that it only takes place in the summer. Hence, by this time of year when the vegetation has died back, there could be up to 8 months accumulation of rubbish.
If you really cannot afford to pick litter more than twice a year, would it be better to move one of these to the winter or early spring? It is at this time of year that the verges look their worst.

"You dropped this", I said, as I lobbed it back into the passengers lap, splashing Coke everywhere!

Belo Horizonte I believe have stopped giving away plastic bags with shopping, you can't even buy them for 5p like in tesco, people quickly learn to take their own bags.

Would be happy to see that here, despite being a PITA at first. As you say, we'd soon adapt.

It's worth reporting flytipping where you see it by the way.

A while ago I spotted a guy flytipping this lot.
I called the council immediately with a report and description of his van.

[img] [/img]

Spotted him doing it again a couple of months later:

[img] [/img]

Reported it again and a few days later a council bloke came out to speak to me, examine the rubbish and take a witness statement etc.

Turns out he had a pretty good idea who it was and he was building a legal case against the guy to have him properly shut down because he was running an unlicensed "waste disposal" service, charging customers for proper disposal and then just flytipping it.

Hope he got banged up for it.

The bit I really don't get is shoes. How on earth does someone lose a shoe on a busy road?

It's a sense of entitlement again - people think that they pay their taxes so someone else can clean up after them. The council should be doing it.

The bit I really don't get is shoes. How on earth does someone lose a shoe on a busy road?

I'd bet that's high jinx tbh. White van crowd on a Friday afternoon, grab the apprentice, lob his shoe out the van window on the motorway.

High jinx - or the remains of an accident 😕

our local council have stopped picking up fly tipped rubbish they just put a sticker on it now, I think they are hoping the local rag and bone men will pick it up for them. There's fridge on the side of the road that's been there for two months.

You can buy decent motion sensitive night vision cameras for 150 quid now, that would be paid back in one fly tipping fine. There are spots that we all know would be perfect for such devices to be placed, councils need to up their game a bit.

Took laddo to football the other Sunday down sir frank whittle way in derby and was slating the scum bags who had fly tipped countless bin bags of rubbish. But no 400 yds dowb the road i realised it was local volunteers who'd basically been litter picking the road verge on a Sunday morning and bagging it up. I could not believe how much there was already bagged up.

@neil, it was the outraged yelp as the perp got his groin soaked in Coke that had me giggling to myself as I legged it away as fast as I could!
An opportunity not to be missed, it doesn't happen often. 😈

No one ever admits to littering though do they. Utter utter scum. If I was in charge of the world I would genuinely make the bastards do time. And Wear bright orange overalls in a chain gang picking it up.

There was a saintly chap and his young son I the local park the other day walking around with a bin bag picking up other peoples litter. Fair did make my heart sing

We're near a reservoir on the outskirts of Brum that often gets fly-tipped - the sod of it is, Birmingham Council are (or were) really good at collecting large items if you contact them, and the recycling centres are great. They're very good at cleaning up the dumped rubbish, just a shame they have to.

an unlucky combination of council cuts and worsening public attitude has led to the current rubbish problem.

Once upon a time councils dealt with most of the rubbish and people had more respect than to litter/fly-tip willy nilly. (Of course there were always exceptions, but generally speaking). Then councils started limiting what they would take from your home and how often they would take it. Then they started limiting what you could take to the dump and what sort of vehicles they would let you take your stuff to the dump in. As it got harder (long ques at the tip on a Sunday morning etc etc) and more expensive for people to do the right thing, it became easier and more tempting for them to do the wrong thing.

Add to that the "throw it out the car window" attitude so many people have nowadays and you can see the result.

I suspect most people on here had parents who would have had a fit had you rolled down a window and thrown rubbish out. My dad would probably have stopped and made me walk back to pick it up if I'd thrown anything out the car, but I wouldn't have done it anyway, because we were brought up not to do things like that.

Once or twice a week I go round my local trails collecting the rubbish mountain bikers have dropped. Lucazade bottles are by far the most common plastic bottle dropped on the trails followed by Red Bull and Monster. Then gel sachets and chocolate wrappers followed by bike parts, mud guards, inner tubes, etc. Cigarette packets and Polish lager cans are also fairly common!
Never see any one dropping the rubbish but lots of people saying thank you to me for picking it up.
One suggestion if everybody who used the trails picked up one or two pieces of rubbish on their way round it would help.
Driving down the A14 a month ago I was shocked by the amount of roadside rubbish. Northamptonshire was by far the worst, a lot less when crossing into Cambridgeshire.

I'm stunned that so many care so little for the environment or others.

Binning your rubbish has to be the easiest thing in the World to do.

Why, in the UK, are so many so lacking in a communal spirit???

The situation is no better here in Ireland,local beauty spots e lane where ,verges,the lane we live on is the point where burgers,deli take aways are finished and jettisoned .

Fly tipping too,local tip/recycle centre you have to pay to dump large items .
Rubbish collections are private too cost you upwards of 300 euro a year.

We visit local compacter once every 2 months, rest goes recycle,plastic glass,paper,card goes on woodburner ,veg waste compost.

But none of that is an excuse for lazyness.

This is a section about a local training spot for hill climbs and just about says it all.

"Second time up as my legs and lungs began to scream I managed to find a novel way to distract myself. I began observing the rubbish in the ditch. At a slow rate of forward progress I managed to get a good overview of the eating, drinking and socialising habits of those who travel up Tickincor under cover of darkness. This is what I learned ;

Lucozade in bottles is the drink of choice as far as the first entrance into the wood.
Coke in cans then takes over. So much so that I began to wonder if a homeless New Yorker with a shopping trolly saw it would they consider it striking gold. (they collect cans and get 5 cents per can for recycling them)
Further up diet coke bottles take over before red bull and disposable coffee bring you to the summit.
Lyons’ is the most popular chipper in Clonmel, followed by McDonalds and the odd customer of Miss Ellies. Supermacs customers must not visit Tickincor.
Benson and hedges is the most popular cigarette followed by Marlboro lights and surprisingly Pall Mall.
Letters from France are discarded without a signature other than DNA.
Flat screen tv’s are all that is wanted and old tube tv’s cannot even be sold on Done Deal by the looks of the ditch.
Nissan cars seem to loose their hubcaps on Tickincor more than any other.
Lotto scratch cards do not seem to produce a winner in at least 14 cases of those who visit Tickincor.
Jaffa cakes are the most popular type of biscuit.
At least 7 people who drink bottled water are not environmentally friendly.
Nappies when discarded and torn open have crystals that fill up and look like broken glass."

I can't stand littering. I've been litter picking our lane for the past year and get a bin bag of crap every 2-3 months. Suspect the same people as the litter follows a trend (why do people tie their rubbish in a carrier bag and bin the whole bag? If you are a scumbag litter dropper, why go to the effort of bagging it?)

Question, why can't we get the community service lot or prison inmates to litter pick? I don't understand why council cuts have to get in the way of litter picking. There's thousands of criminals who spend their days banged up when they could be improving the environment....

I'd imagine that having large prison "chain gangs" doing litter picking poses some security challenges:

[i]"Okay, you 50 inmates. Spread out randomly along this path and pick up whatever you find while us three prison officers watch. Be sure to let us know if you find any drugs, contraband, stabby or shooty things."[/i]

So I'm not sure it would actually be all that cheap.

Had a lovely picnic with the family in the boot of my SUV today, watching the planes land at Shoreham airport. A beautiful spot by the river. Litter everywhere.
😥

Decided to be the good guy and pick up a load to take home, a bottle of sour milk cracked and leaked into the boot. 👿

Thanks world.

Since the opening of Mcd's and KFC's drive throughs,together with the associated coffee shops,a few miles away,the roadside litter has become considerably worse.
My wife voluntarily litter picks the country roads but its impossible to keep up with the amount thrown out of vehicles. A couple of weeks ago 2 dead horses were dumped in a layby nearby,and during daylight.
The first time my wife went litter picking she collected a dozen bin bags full.The council said that she should have had permission from them to do it,take out insurance,hi viz vest,and that they would pick the bags up this time but next time she would be charged.
I volunteer with the Forestry and i don't think its the mtb'ers that have been riding for years that litter,but people on hire bikes or visiting the forest only occasionally.

Since the opening of Mcd's and KFC's drive throughs,together with the associated coffee shops

The number of coffee cups I saw alongside the A3/M25 junction the other day was staggering..

The council said that she should have had permission from them to do it,take out insurance,hi viz vest,and that they would pick the bags up this time but next time she would be charged.

'sake! 👿

I suppose that's a good reason to do it via a volunteer group like Sustrans - they handle all the council and health and safety nonsense, as well as sorting out equipment, disposal and usually lunch.

Did an organized litter pick on Aberthaw beach recently. All sorts of interesting crap gets washed up. Loads of shot gun cartridges.

I wonder about a tax on packaging maybe just tax non recyclable stuff?

Also a tax on dog food- the amount of dog crap everywhere is unreal

kjcc25 - Member
.....
Driving down the A14 a month ago I was shocked by the amount of roadside rubbish. Northamptonshire was by far the worst, a lot less when crossing into Cambridgeshire.

Exactly the section of road that prompted my post, driving back home along it today, there was two council guys & a public spirited middle aged lady trying to turn the tide.. Fair play to her but she need to wear a hi-viz

just been in mallorca for a week-- one of the most noticable things is the lack of litter -either in built up areas but especially on the rural lanes and climbs-- got to be a cultural ting--like drink driving is now unacceptable but years ago attitiudes were very different--the same sort of shift is needed towards litter and environmental abuse..

When I do my evening road rides in the summer around Castle Combe and Lacock, it is depressing the mount of rubbish left everywhere and tipping. Some of the stuff that is dumped looks like it would be easier to take to the local council recycling centre rather than drive around looking for a suitable out of the way place.

Maybe its time to go all Alice's Restaurant on this.

(The response to the litter not the justification for littering)